The Week's Best Android, iPhone, iPad, and Windows Phone Apps

I think everyone can agree that packing is a terrible thing, and that unpacking is even worse. It's bad enough having to figure out what you need when you're away from home, but having to put it back in its place when you get back? Urgh. But I have better things to occupy my mind right now, at this time of the week it's all about the apps.

iPhone Apps

Contact Center:This one is designed to make contacting all your friends and family much easier. Essentially it puts all your contact apps in one central hub, including the phone, texting, email, Facetime, etc. It's also got group messaging, group email, and the ability to search and share GIFs. [Free]

Pin Drop: A way for you to bookmark locations on a custom map, Pin Drop will let you save your favourite places out and about. Whether they're eateries, tourist hotspots, entertainment venues, or whatever else. But it's not just one big map with all your favourite spots, you can create multiple maps for different things, and even share them with your friends. [Free]

Snapguide:This one is a way to make creating your own how-to guides even easier than ever before, as well as finding guides on topics that you have an active interest in. This version has been completely redesigned for the iPhone, and now has the inclusion of a personalised home screen to make finding content even easier than ever before. [Free]

Tripcast:Journalling is becoming increasingly popular these days, but your day-to-day journals won't be of much interest to other people, but your holidays might. Tripcast is a way to share your holidays snaps and thoughts with your friends without having to worry about anything being filtered out (you know what Facebook's like). [Free]

Hyperlapse from Instagram: Have you ever seem those time-lapse videos online and been envious of how great they are? Maybe you want to make your own, but don't know a damn thing about editing them together? Well Hyperlapse will do all the hard stuff for you, and let you film your own time-lapses with minimal fuss. It also comes with Instagram's stabilisation technology, so it patches together nice and smoothly. [Free]

iPad Apps

Ancestry: An app that focuses on creating and monitoring your own family tree, with a simplistic interface. This is a new version with improved search features, better hints on where to look for ancestral information, improved and intuitive navigation, as well as push notifications when more hints pop up. [Free -- with in-app purchases]

Quora:When you want an answer to a question you could go to Yahoo answers, if you wanted to be trolled and fed misinformation. Quora gets answers for questions from experts, and the people who actually know what they're talking about. This is a new version, the first to bring in iPad compatibility, which includes a brand new design, and new features to help reading and writing. [Free]

Bioshock:The much loved video game has made it to the iPad, and now you can explore the undersea depths of Rapture on the move. Upgrade your weapons, avoid the splicers, take out the Big Daddies, and survive to find your way home. This is the full game, and there are none of those wretched in-app purchases to deal with. [£10.49]

Digital Concert Hall:An app that lets you listen to some of the world's finest classical music from the Berliner Philharmoniker, either live or on-demand. It's had a pretty hefty upgrade, including an iOS 7 redesign, offline play, and a feature that keeps the concerts going if your iPad's screen turns off. [Free -- with subscription]

Hat Monkey:Hat Monkey is an interactive "best friend" for children under the age of five. Basically it's something for your kids to play and interact with and, hopefully, have a good time. Help the monkey around the house, play hide and seek, answer the phone, and read stories. [£1.99]

Android Apps

Fragment:A nice little app that attempts to make something a little bit more interesting out of your photos. Especially these days where filters are all the rage you need something a little more interesting. Referring to itself as "prismatic photography", Fragment uses a prism effect to put together a selection of photos in your gallery into a collage of sorts. It's not for everyone, but it is interesting and it'll be fun to play around with. [£1.20]

Superbetter: This is a game designed to help you achieve goals in life, improve your resilience, and turn your life into an adventure of your choosing. Anywhere you want to get stronger, or better, can be added into Superbetter to help you out. That might be improving your physical fitness, cutting down on smoking, or whatever you want. Programme it into the app and it will help you keep track and improve your chances. [Free]

Android Wear Beelink:A Bluetooth management app for Android Wear users, Beelink allows you to manage which device you watch is linked to at any given time. Say for instance you are working on your tablet, and have your phone with you, you can tell your watch to link to the tablet and give yourself a bit more control over the device. It's pretty much a one-function app, but it saves having to fiddle about in menus trying to change connection. [Free]

Calc+:Most calculator apps are similar to real life calculators, fairly basic with no major functions above the usual song and dance. Calc+ is a much smarter calculator, which has a calculation history that you can refer to later on and share with your friends. It also comes with a simple UI and an intuitive design. You don't need your stock calculator anymore, you should use this one instead. [Free -- with in-app purchases]

App Swap - The Smart Drawer: A digital drawer that makes it easier for you to launch your apps. What it does is collects your apps into a menu that you swipe down from the top of your phone's screen, automatically ordering them so you don't have to. All this ensures you can find and open them quickly and easily. [Free]

Windows Phone Apps

Unfollow Spy:Want to keep track of your Twitter and Instagram accounts in one place? Then you might want to give Unfollow Spy a look into. Most of it is related to your followers, seeing who follows you, who unfollows you, and who you follow that doesn't follow you back. Some of you might think you have better things to do than worry about this, but it can be interesting to keep track of it. [Free]

Spotify:We all know what Spotify is, and this is an updated version of the (still) relatively new Windows Phone version of the app. The update has reportedly fixed issues many users had logging in, meaning the app is actually usable for a lot more people. [Free -- with premium subscription]

Just Yo: Because of the whole devs-ignoring-Windows-Phone situation, you lot would miss out on interesting new apps if it wasn't for the third parties. Now Windows Phone users can get in on the bizarre new craze that is Yo. Literally, all you can do is send people messages that say "yo". If that's your thing then you needn't be put off by the fact that you use a Windows Phone. [Free]

Suberb Mario: Have you ever wanted to see Nintendo's famous plumber create ice powers, collect keys, and take on black knights? Well you can't, so this shameless rip-off will have to do. In Superb Mario you take on the role of Maria (see what they did there) on a quest to do... something. It looks totally bizarre as a game, but it's the closest thing you'll get to actually playing Mario on a Windows Phone. [Free]